Archive for the ‘TVoIP’ Category

SippinWhisky’s Distillery calls its readers’ attentions to SailingNews.tv. If you are stuck in your office or somewhere in the landlocked midwest United States, this is the next best thing to being on the water–or other–found to date. (Note: This site is French, but The Distillery will overlook that.)

Do you live and breathe NASCAR? Do you like the internet? If the answer to both of those questions is “Yes,” then head on over to Speed.tv for your daily NASCAR fix. Not only will you find NASCAR videos, but also other racing videos, including motorcycle and F1 Grand Prix.

The site is superb for automotive racing fans. It is well-designed and includes message boards, chats, and fantasy racing. You will also find competitive online drag racing in the game, PINKS. In sum, Speed TV is the place to get all of your NASCAR news, commentary and video.

That’s what they say. Then how is it possible? Private benefactors? A rich uncle? An oil sheik? Possibly a money-laundering scheme? It may sound a tad old-fashioned, but The Distillery is a bit cynical about free lunches, roads paved with gold, lands of milk and honey, and virgins. Then again, Independent World Television does make its business plan public. (Yea, The Distillery believes everything it reads online.)

And, none of these “friends” of IWT could possibly have an agenda or any influence over content, right? Of course not. Never! Still, let’s keep an eye on these folks. The Distillery foresees something either really good or really bad coming from this. (Where’s that business plan again?)

Welcome to the 21st century. A decade or so ago, the cable industry proudly announced that one day consumers would have a choice of 400 channels. Cable firms were as short-sighted then as they are now. The Distillery laughed when the cable industry promised the future as they saw it. Instead, The Distillery saw thousands and thousands of channels, some even “starring” narcissistic individuals, but all focused on increasingly narrow target or niche markets.

One might look at it another way. Remember when ESPN first aired and its sports content included lumberjacking and other decidedly obscure “sports?” In a sense, ESPN was more ahead of its time than it knew. What those early programs lacked in numbers of viewers, they more than made up for their few viewers with their [implicit] predictions of a future where broadcasting (e.g., Monday Night Football) gives way to narrowcasting (e.g., “season ticket” all-games packages), and then to microcasting where only very small niche markets exist (e.g., field hockey TVoIP), and can be profitable even with far smaller scales and scopes given the internet’s often contrarian economics.